Nick Cummins Quotes

I quit my job. I bought myself a real cheap, like, around-the-world flight ticket, and I went to 16 countries for six months just backpacking, living in cheap hostels, looking for stories with a camera and my ex-girlfriend.

Every time I took a long leave from home, I felt as if I were going to conquer the world. Or rather, take possession of what is my birthright, my inheritance.

When I left school, I went backpacking around the world for two years.

I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't want people to ask me questions about it.

It's been great to travel because I really enjoyed being 'Elektra', so it's not a problem talking about it.

It's a life I would have never been able to foresee for myself, but I'm so grateful for it, and I really just loved skiing as a kid, and it's crazy how far it's taken me.

Wherever it's good, whatever strange, faraway land, let's go there, let's stay in that place alone.

Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.

Get out and find ...the country. And ourselves.

The open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.

I travel because I like to move from place to place, I enjoy the sense of freedom it gives me, it pleases me to be rid of ties, responsibilities, duties, I like the unknown; I meet odd people who amuse me for a moment and sometimes suggest a theme for a composition; I am often tired of myself and I have a notion that by travel I can add to my personality and so change myself a little. I do not bring back from the journey quite the same self that I took

Why do we travel to remote locations? To prove our adventurous spirit or to tell stories about incredible things? We do it to be alone amongst friends and to find ourselves in a land without man.

Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back.

For years I drove cross-country, back and forth a dozen times, sometimes on book tour, sometimes just to get lost and found.

As a kid, I used to dream about airplanes before I ever flew in one. I really knew, when I started photographing, I wanted it to be a way of knowing different cultures, not just in other countries but in this country, too, and I knew I wanted to enter other lives. I knew I wanted to be a voyeur.

When I graduated from college in the spring of 1970, I decided to hitchhike around Europe with my guitar and my backpack. I was gone for about four months.

Ah! Young people, travel if you can, and if you cannot - travel all the same!

I go out on the road for much longer than I probably should and lose more of myself than I should.

Through travel, you discover a new aspect to your personality. You discover things which you wouldn't seated in the confines of your home.

You don't have to travel, but I find extended travel to be a helpful tool for reexamining yourself and the constraints you've artificially placed on your life. It's easy to believe everything has to be done one way if you're always in one place around the same people.

Getting on a plane is hard for me, but I do it, because travel is vital to me.

'On the Road' completely changed the way I looked at what you could do with your life.

The Congo was the most difficult shoot of my life but was also maybe the greatest adventure of my life.

Sometimes I forget some of the things I've done. I recently recalled that after Watergate I went away by myself to Tahiti for a month, moving from island to island. That was a point in my life where I didn't know what was next.

In general, when you travel, you get into a different reality and are able to more accurately reflect on your ordinary life. Hiking does that for me.